On June 13, on electionlawblog.org, Ned Foley, Professor of Law at Ohio State, posted a paper forthcoming in the Kentucky Law Journal titled “Self-Districting: The Ultimate Antidote to Gerrymandering.” In the article, he reminds us that districts do not have to be geography-based. A district can be a subset of a state’s entire population and can be formed by like-minded individuals who can voluntarily organize and form a political district that is not necessarily geographically continuous. A person’s neighbors may be in his political district or be in a different district in a self-districting plan. While this would not affect certain elections (e.g., the single US House race in Wyoming), in elections with many seats to be decided (e.g., US House elections in California or the houses of all state legislatures), individuals in currently unelectable political minorities (e.g., Libertarians and Greens) could band together to elected representatives in single district elections and win seats in legislatures. The self-districting aspect of this plan would do away with state legislatures’ power to draw political district boundaries.

Here is Mr. Foley’s current paper on this topic:

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The Libertarian Party’s Ballot Access Committee held a meeting on Monday, June 12, 2023. From that meeting come these petition drive updates:

Arkansas: 3,740 total signatures to date, 1,900 of which have been gathered by volunteers. 10,000 valid signatures are needed, with a deadline of February 13, 2024.

North Dakota: The petition drive is getting underway with a volunteer effort to date. No reported numbers yet.

Ohio: The LP will be doing an Independent petition for its presidential ticket, needing 5,000 valid signatures, with an August 2024 deadline. A stand-in presidential ticket has been selected and the selection of presidential electors is nearing completion. When that is done, the petition drive will start.

On June 12, the Ohio Supreme Court issued an opinion in State ex rel One Person, One Vote v Ohio Ballot Board, 2023-Ohio-1928. This is a lawsuit over the wording of the ballot measure that will be on the ballot in August 2023, making it more difficult for initiatives to get on the ballot and also making it more difficult for them to pass.

The ruling upholds the wording that says the measure “Elevates” the number of signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot. The plaintiffs had argued that “elevates” implies an improvement. They argued that the ballot should say that the measure “increases” the number of signatures, but the Court said “elevates” and “increases” mean the same thing. That part of the ruling was 4-3. The Court did order a few changes in the wording, but those changes aren’t as important as the issue of which verb to use. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the news about the decision.